Left Out: Pragmatism, Exceptionalism, and the Poverty of American Marxism, 1890-1922 by Brian Lloyd (Baltimore; London: The Johns Hopkins
University Press, 1997) has considerable intellectual and historical merit.
My biggest reservation lay in waiting for the punchline, i.e. the practical
alternative to Second International Marxism going south. It is rare for me to
find an analysis that tells me something new, but this one has a lot to say
about American Marxism in the Debs/2nd International era and about the class
basis and ideological underpinnings of American Progressivism and pragmatism.

I was struck by the central role Lloyd ascribes to psychology in the theoretical
basis of so many of the thinkers he treats, starting with James and Dewey.
Another main theme is the duality Lloyd sees in pragmatism as indicated by the
fundamental philosophical opposition of Dewey to James although both are included
within the same tradition. I find that Lloyd makes a very convincing prima
facie argument all around and even gives me clues as to the real nature
of the current revival of pragmatism by today's opportunist liberals, such as
Richard Rorty and Cornel West, both firmly in the camp of irrationalism. I can
also see some underlying motivations for those who now claim the mantle of "American
philosophy," an expression I have always considered an oxymoron.

Lloyd takes a panoramic view of the class logic behind the early American socialists
in his book. I can see his argument for intellectual independencei.e the
need for intellectuals to be independent of bourgeois thought. But Lloyd’s
argument for the theoretical development of Marxism independent of the labor
movement, while intriguing, troubles me as far as practical politics go. Revolutionary
situations such as obtained in Russia, China, and various other countries are
relatively rare, and most people are reformists except under drastic conditions.
Hence what does Lloyd consider the practical political role of Marxist theoreticians
to be? It would seem he would have to uphold the vanguard party conception,
or else how could the maintenance of the independence of the Marxist tradition
have any political efficacy? The existence of vanguards, though, tends to exacerbate
the very problems they are designed to solve, for new class ambitions can solidify
under the banner of revolutionary parties as they do under reformist ones, as
Lloyd well knows.

Noteworthy is Lloyd's uncompromising dedication to theory, taking Lenin's dictum
seriously, that revolutionary practice is impossible in lieu of revolutionary
theory. Lloyd demonstrates from beginning to end that the American socialist
left was not essentially different from its European counterpart (thus not exceptionalist!),
and it was crippled by the ideological presumptions of pragmatism, the New Psychology,
fantasies of national character and exceptionalism, fatalistic determinism,
economism, syndicalism, a social engineering complex, tough-minded worship of
facts, and hayseed empiricism. And this was true not just of philistines, compromisers,
backsliders, and turncoats, but even of the best theorists and practitioners
of American Marxism—Boudin, Fraina—as well as Debs and the atheoretical journalist
John Reed.

Lloyd follows the course of progressive liberalism,
socialist trade unionism, and Second International Marxism from the moment of
the consolidation of pragmatism as an ideological tendency (in which antithetical
tendencies come to share the same name: James's retrograde irrationalism and
Dewey's shallow scientism), up through the crisis brought on by World War I,
the capitulation of American liberal and left intellectuals to America's participation
in the war, to the antiwar resistance (Bourne et al), to reactions pro and con
concerning the Russian Revolution, and finally to Lenin. The story ends with
Lenin lecturing Fraina in Moscow on the need to study philosophy.

There is a punchline, which comes in the concluding chapter. Lloyd swipes at
New Left historians—especially Paul Buhle—for resurrecting the childish populism,
exceptionalism, obsession with national character, and nostalgia for Debsian,
Pop Front and other indigenous American socialisms. (He also swipes at Thompson
and Gramsci in passing.) He far prefers the greater perceptiveness of old leftists
(even the turncoats) and consensus historians regarding the essence of Marxism
to the intellectually flabby apologists of the New Left who naively reproduce
the hayseed empiricism of old. Lloyd argues that the New Left also resorts to
clichés about its own history, reducing an analysis of its mistakes to
the sectarian Maoist destruction of SDS.

Lloyd summarizes all the bad intellectual practices
of the Debs-era and the New Left. Outstanding among them is the chronic inability
to draw reasoned conclusions from empirical facts. Individual events are blown
up to prove metaphysically conceived notions of social realities, psychological
dispositions, and national character. Lloyd does not argue for political purism
nor stake the claim that a devotion to Marxist theory alone could guarantee
revolutionary success. He argues for rescuing the theoretical as well
as the practical history of American Marxism and investigating the actual relationship
and possible influences of theory on political practice. He claims that preserving
and cultivating Marxist theory autonomously, apart from trade unionism and other
pragmatic social movements, is absolutely essential, as revolutionary social
transformation has to be a conscious process and cannot simply be a spontaneous
product of circumstances.

This study is far superior to Menand's middlebrow analysis of pragmatism. I
was also reminded of the brain-dead insipidity of the American "activist"
type as I listened to our Pacifica station's pabulum while finishing up this
book. There is much about Lloyd's perspective that I admire: the need for intellectuals
to preserve their independence and not blind themselves with bad thinking, the
utter bankruptcy of pragmatism and the worship of the brute fact, the intellectual
banality of the New Left. The resurrection of the Pop Front and old CP intellectual
and cultural contributions is a salubrious effort to recover the repressed past,
but it tends to be naive and seems to be related to the opportunism of the present.
(Even certain Trotskyist scholars are willing to bury the hatchet and admit
the old commies into the brotherhood. Another interesting example is Michael
Denning's inclusion of C.L.R. James in The Cultural Front. While it is
gratifying to see C.L.R. James's contributions to the study of American society
and culture incorporated into left and mainstream scholarship at last, it is
a falsification of history to seamlessly incorporate James into a tradition
he despised and from which he intentionally separated himself. There is not
one James or leftist scholar—not even one—who is capable of handling Mariners,
because Mariners implicitly condemns each and every one.)

However, Lloyd leaves us hanging with respect
to key issues. The intellectuals he examines operated in leadership roles and/or
the intellectual superstructures of American radicalism. Lloyd convinces us
that these people should have thought differently (though they probably could
not have), and that they should have taken different policy positions, but there
is no indication of what they should have done differently with respect
to the actual organized social movement, and what practical alternatives existed
given the state of the labor/socialist movement. With respect to the Russian
Revolution: a number of Second International Marxists were appalled by it and
thought it was the most inauspicious place for a socialist revolution to take
place. Lloyd documents the professional anticommunism whose roots lie in this
reaction. He supports Lenin's vision. He also acknowledges the weakness of the
Soviet position and its initial hopes to bolster itself via revolution in Germany
and other places, then Lenin's rejection of ultraleftism as world-revolutionary
prospects faded.

The question remains, though: given the very different levels of development
of Russia and the advanced industrial bourgeois democracies like the USA, how
would a Leninist perspective apply to American conditions—not just in terms
of the organization and perspective of a revolutionary party, but in terms of
the seizure of state power and the organization of what happens after? Lloyd
seems to be rather cavalier about the institutions of bourgeois democracy which
manages to be as ruthless and undemocratic as it needs to be and thus is just
a capitalist state machine that needs to be smashed. The USA was undemocratic
to an extreme—labor had no rights, civil liberties were a dead letter, women
could not vote until after the war, blacks were completely suppressed with legal
as well as the most terroristic of means. Still, an advanced industrial capitalist
society with a formal democratic apparatus is not a third world peasant country.
We still have not the slightest idea how to organize a socialist society. And
this is just to consider the state of the world in 1918, before taking into
account our historical knowledge of what transpired in the ensuing nine decades.
The USSR's situation and prospects were grim even before Lenin's death. Lenin
himself wanted to promote philosophical sophistication and independent thinking,
but the culture of which he was part rendered such an orientation impossible,
which he only fully realized too late. There is not only the debacle of the
USSR to consider, but what about the practice of American communists, who at
least nominally adopted the Marxist-Leninist perspective that Lloyd supports?
Can one claim that the autonomy of Marxist theory was maintained by any communist
organization that ever existed? How can theory and practice in effect interact?
And, since theory requires theorists, what is the role of the individual and
of individualism in instantiating the intellectual autonomy required to maintain
theoretical autonomy? Lloyd has not a word to say about any of this. He has
been unfairly accused of presumption and arrogance, but his more perceptive
reviewers have noted that his perspective seems to be floating on air, with
nothing to support it but a proclaimed allegiance to Marxism-Leninism.

Don't forget to check out the bibliographical essay at the
end, which gives essential readings correlated with each chapter. Note the books
recommended (chapter one) for the study of the history of pragmatism. Later
on, he cites some of his own influences. The major ones are Marx, Engels, Lenin,
Lukacs, and Mao. More contemporary scholars cited include Perry Anderson, Charles
Bettleheim, Lucio Colletti, Bertell Ollman, David-Hillel Rubin, and G. Therborn.
The only thing I can say about this is that anyone who claims Mao as a favorable
influence deserves a good beating.

11-12 December 2003, 10 March 2004

Ryder's Review of
Left Out Reviewed

by Ralph Dumain

Reading several articles by John Ryder gave me the overall impression that
I am not his usual reading audience. I do not believe that this is because I'm
not in the philosophy profession, but because I am not the type of person for
whom he has to walk on eggshells in order to remain on good terms. I get the
feeling Ryder faces an audience biased against him and might even be unsympathetic
or hostile and must therefore be won over.

I do not think that Ryder’s criticism of Lloyd's
take on pragmatism, James, or Dewey, was successful. (See Ryder’s review of
Lloyd in Transactions, Winter 1999, Vol. XXXV, No. 1, pp. 197-203.) Ryder
bypassed much of Lloyd's argument, suggesting that there are other aspects of
Dewey which are progressive and worth considering, which well may be so but
hardly invalidates Lloyd's argument.

Ryder points out the "glib and superficial
treatment" Lloyd gives of pragmatism as a philosophy. Secondly, the critique
of American pragmatism's overt or implicit fusion with American socialism is
interwoven with the issue of American exceptionalism. Thirdly, there is Lloyd's
conclusion that pragmatism is essentially an apology for bourgeois society.
And there is the judgment that pragmatism's politics is essentially liberalism.
Now depending on how one evaluates each of these components and their interrelationships,
one will come to different conclusions about the degree of Lloyd’s dogmatism.
Rightly or wrongly Ryder hints at a certain amount of inflexibility or dogmatism
in Lloyd’s treatment of these issues. I can see different ways of interpreting
them and especially their interrelationships or independence from another.

There is another major issue not mentioned, perhaps because the book reportedly
slights it, to wit: the actual epistemological and ontological commitments of
pragmatism, which are the primary grounds on which it should be indicted, and
which supply the missing link that would demonstrate the intrinsic relationship
between pragmatism and bourgeois apologetics. On the other hand, I see American
exceptionalism as an issue potentially separable from the rest. (There are some
rare positive Marxist approaches to American exceptionalism, for example C.L.R.
James's American Civilization, which has been coopted but not properly
intellectually processed by the left academic meat grinder.) Exceptionalism
and pragmatism may both be quintessentially American ideologies springing out
of the same set of circumstances, but I would be hesitant to claim that their
relationship is intellectually crucial. I can see the argument for the linkage,
as they both deny certain kinds of social determination in favor of ideology
and rhetoric, but I would not want to invest much of my time in proving their
interrelationship except maybe as a byproduct of another analysis. A distinction
could even be made between the components of liberalism and "liberalism",
and between liberal institutions and their necessary connection to bourgeois
society. That is, liberal institutions could be seen to be a prerequisite and
necessary ingredient in the formation of a socialist society. (The early Habermas
was working in this vein, I would say.) My guess is that Ryder would be happy
with such an argument, as I would. Hence it is possible to infer some degree
of dogmatism in Lloyd's account. (I found this dogmatism to be located at one
specific Archimedean point: Lenin as the anchor for the “correct” perspective.)

I always look forward to the trashing of pragmatism. On the other hand, hatchet
jobs have to be executed with some degree of skill. I've looked through Harry
Wells' book on pragmatism, and, as much as I would like to believe it, I don't:
it is poorly argued and completely unconvincing. My only other comment on Ryder's
review is that even though Dewey may have been more progressive that Lloyd is
willing to concede, that hardly makes his philosophy more desirable or profound
or any less bourgeois. It just means that others have been indulging in overkill.

1 December 2003

Rider to Ryder on 'Pragmatic
Political Technology: A Reasonable Possibility?'

by Ralph Dumain

John Ryder's article on "Pragmatic Political Technology" (World Congress
of Philosophy, Istanbul, Turkey, August, 2003) failed to inspire me. I see nothing
unique about the value commitments of pragmatism to justify the existence of
a distinct philosophy bearing that name. I also value "individual development,
free inquiry into and exchange of ideas, and the importance of democratic forms
of social organization". Is that any reason for me to enlist myself in
the ranks of pragmatism? I see none whatever. I'm also interested in education
as a top priority, and in instilling certain habits of mind, independently of
specific political commitment. Should I then call myself a pragmatist? I can't
see why. I can see good reasons not to, as pragmatism in the popular mind means
just the opposite, i.e. adaptation to circumstances rather than standing on
principle, a questionable foundation for any intellectual position and least
of all intellectual independence. In the question of political technology in
practice, Ryder addresses the problem of what went wrong with Marxism:

. . . the powers that be believed that their ideas were necessary for the
development of their respective societies, so much so that dissension, even
disagreement, was not to be tolerated.

And:

. . . but even Marxism, which had and has a greater claim to democratic possibilities,
was put to work as an ideological foundation, as a set of truths rather than
a set of possibilities to be employed, confirmed or refuted in experience,
revised, or possibly rejected. Nor were the basic ideas formed through the
free and creative exercise of individual and community determination of values
and ends. Had they been, the pragmatist might argue, i.e. had they been approached
pragmatically rather than ideologically, there might have been greater hope
of success.

But this is a rather superficial approach to what the problem was either intellectually
or sociologically. How did Marxism get transformed from a set of possibilities
to a set of ideological truths, and what were the social determinants of such
social instantiations? Ryder completely bypasses the intellectual content and
methodology of Marxism, which must have some relationship to its ability to
be configured in various ways including ideologically. And on the other side,
Ryder ignores the sociological dimension, the nature of socialization and institutionalization
that primes ideas and people to be incorporated into certain types of structures.
In sum, Ryder's approach is as much sloganeering and propagandistic and external
to any concrete content as is pragmatism itself. Open-endedness, open-mindedness,
experimentalism, etc. is all fine rhetoric, but there is no intellectual content
to it, and there can be no philosophy that monopolizes such generic values or
can lay claim to exclusive rights over them. Either one is capable of manifesting
these properties or not; there is something suspect about bragging about them.
Ironically, open-mindedness is a matter of practice and not of theory. It cannot
be theorized in a vacuum, because as such it doesn't exist; it only has meaning
with respect to some range of options based upon the state of knowledge at any
given time. That is one more reason a "pragmatic political technology"
is senseless. Neither Dewey nor Habermas are adequate in explaining why bourgeois
democracy can never realize its promises or why the ideal speech situation is
indeed a counterfactual fantasy.